


One for the money, two for the show

by Mere_Mortifer



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Accidental Sugar Daddy AU, Actor Richie Tozier, Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Hollywood, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Pennywise (IT), Attempt at Humor, Betaed, Bottom Eddie Kaspbrak, College Student Eddie Kaspbrak, Coming Out, Eddie Kaspbrak Has Issues, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Famous Richie Tozier, Felching, First Time Bottoming, Fluff, Forced Outing, From Sex to Love, Frottage, Gay Eddie Kaspbrak, Gay Richie Tozier, Height Differences, Hot Tub Sex, Light Angst, M/M, Misunderstandings, Money, POV Alternating, Panic Attacks, Paparazzi, Pining, Power Imbalance, Richie Tozier Has Issues, Richie Tozier Has a Crush on Eddie Kaspbrak, Richie Tozier is Whipped, Smut, Social Media, Sonia Kaspbrak's A+ Parenting, Strangers to Lovers, They switch at one point though, Top Richie Tozier
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:00:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22699801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mere_Mortifer/pseuds/Mere_Mortifer
Summary: “Oh, is that what you’re doing? Silly me, I thought you were trying to seduce me,” Richie says, only half joking, alluding to the grand total of five inches left between them.The stranger, still fuming, lowers his doe eyes and gives Richie a once over that he can feel right down to the base of his spine. “Well, is it fucking working?” he says in the end.When Richie and Eddie get papped arguing in public about a bad parking job, the media spins the story to make Richie seem like an homophobic asshole. There's one obvious way to clear Richie's name: pretend the two had been dating all along.[Currently in hiatus]
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 164
Kudos: 577
Collections: Famous Richie Tozier, IT ❀ Valentine's Day Fic Exchange





	1. Bad decisions, worse consequences

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WarpzoneKid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WarpzoneKid/gifts).



> Originally written for the Valentine's day fic exchange!
> 
> If some of you are familiar with this fic, is because I posted the first chapter back in February. I decided to extend the plot, edit what I'd already written, and go back to posting. I added enough stuff to this chapter to warrant splitting it into two parts, so I suggest rereading from the start if you stumbled upon this fic a while ago. 
> 
> @[rea_of_sunshine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rea_of_sunshine/pseuds/rea_of_sunshine): thank you so much for making this thing readable with your comments and corrections (not once, but twice!) and in general for being a wonderful beta and friend. I couldn't do it without you.

“Hey. _Hey!_ ”

Richie groans, and tugs the hood of his jacket lower over his face.

It’s a lovely night, the unforgiving L.A. sun finally sunk behind the horizon and replaced by a cool breeze that makes everyone breathe easier—and still Richie feels (probably looks as well) like death warmed over.  
The angry _hey!_ shouted his way is not the reason for that. After so many years, Richie’s used to less-than-wholesome fan interactions—which, he thinks stubbornly, doesn’t mean he has to enjoy being yelled at in public. Not that it comes as a surprise, in this case. He’s been waiting for this particular stranger to approach him since Richie started fumbling with his car keys.

Richie had been on the other end of the street when he noticed the man.  
He’d been texting Bill when he raised his gaze from his phone, abandoning the chat in favor of not banging his head on a lamppost, and there he was: a brunet, with his back to Richie, lurking around his flashy convertible. The man was busy tapping his foot on the sidewalk and obsessively checking his watch—the only thing more glaring than the tense line of his shoulders was the denim jacket covering them, full of pins and colorful rainbow patches.  
Richie had slowed down his pace and unblocked his phone to text Bill a series of quick messages:

 _there’s a guy near my car, i think he’s a pissed fan or something_ ↢

↣ _Wait until he goes away_

 _nah he’s tiny, i think I can take him_ ↢

 _he looks so mad lol_ ↢

↣ _Jesus Christ. Good luck, I guess_

↣ _Let me know if you died_

Despite what he said to Bill, Richie had no idea if the man was actually waiting for him or not. It was possible that he’d recognized Richie’s car, because Richie likes to stroll up to public events in it—bright red paint to match the red carpet, custom plate reading TRASH, as apparently, somewhere along the way, Richie became a brand new type of rich asshole.

If anything, he was hoping to be wrong about his initial impression. Yeah, no luck there.  
From behind him, the guy repeats his aggressive greeting, and Richie looks forlornly at the open door of his car. The temptation to bang his head on it grows stronger, and for a moment Richie pictures living in a world where he could have that sort of mental breakdown in public without it trending on Twitter hours later. 

It’s not the first time he’s had similar thoughts. Who would have guessed that money and fame wouldn’t be enough to make him happy?  
Almost everyone, turns out. Richie was seventeen the first time he heard his dad ask _are you sure this is the life you want?_ , because Richie’s misery was obvious no matter how hard he tried to hide it, and the worried looks from whomever bothered to care about him never stopped coming. They dwindled in his early twenties, when Richie’s wallet became fat enough to attract the people who wouldn’t question why he wanted to be wasted all the fucking time—then he met Stan, and they came back with a vengeance, accompanied by a perfectly-shaped raised eyebrow. Richie’s manager, Stefanie, lost no time in hiring Stan as Richie’s PA.

It went something like this: 

FADE IN:

INT. CROWDED HOUSEPARTY - NIGHT 

STEFANIE comes into frame. Mid-30’s, dressed in an expensive tailleur. She pushes her way through a crowd of drunk twenty-somethings. The floor is sticky. She’d rather be anywhere else, but first she has to make sure her most lucrative client is not choking on his own vomit. 

She opens the door to the main bathroom. Her penciled-in eyebrows raise high on her forehead. 

INT. BATHROOM  
STAN, early-20’s, dressed in a shirt buttoned up all the way to the top, sleeves rolled up, is holding RICHIE’s head under the open faucet in the sink.

STEFANIE:  
What is happening here?  
STAN:  
It’s not what it looks like  
STEFANIE:  
It looks like you’re trying to make Richie sober up  
STAN:  
It’s exactly what it looks like  
STEFANIE:  
What’s your name?  
STAN:  
Stanley Uris  
STEFANIE:  
You’re hired. Do you even need a job? Whatever, you’re hired.  
STAN:  
Alright.  
Stan turns the water colder. Richie, sputtering like a dog, turns to look at his manager.  
RICHIE:  
I like this guy! Can we give him a raise?

That was, what, ten years ago? Stan still regularly has to deal with a shitfaced Richie—he hasn’t pushed his face under a faucet of cold water in a long while, but he _does_ always pick up the phone when Richie needs to be told to put down the sixth drink of the night and finally leave the party he didn’t want to go to in the first place. 

Well, the point is, Richie is like every other millennial who’s been miserable since they hit puberty—the only difference is that he takes his depression naps while wrapped in high thread-count egyptian sheets. 

Okay, maybe he’s being a tad _too_ dramatic. He’s had a long, _long_ day.

“ _Hey,"_ the guy says, _again_ , but this time there’s something in the aspiration on the H that makes Richie think he’s about to get stabbed. “It’s _you._ ” 

Richie gives up on hiding his face and turns to see what he wants.  
 _Probably to tell me that my new movie is an unfunny cash-grab and that I’m a talentless fraud,_ Richie thinks, reaching levels of projecting previously unknown to mankind, considering said new movie hasn’t even been filmed yet. The day was long because Richie spent most of it begging a team of writers not to ruin the script he and Bill had worked on for a year and a half—he might be a bit sensitive about the subject, that’s all. 

Richie pushes the door of his car closed. “What do you want?” he says, trying for a carefully neutral tone of voice. What he ends up doing instead is staring at the stranger, mouth gaping open like a very surprised fish.  
The man in front of him tilts his chin up to compensate for the height difference ( _guh_ , Richie thinks, eloquently) and instills even more aggression in the angry arch of his eyebrows. Which Richie does not want to lick, because that’s just too fucking weird to admit even in his own head.  
  
He thinks that somewhere in the silence that follows, the guy starts calling him names, none of them nice—(un)fortunately Richie doesn’t register any of them, because his brain is otherwise busy.  
Mostly processing the guy’s appearance.  
It’s not a scientific process: it consists mostly of noticing things like _doe eyes_ , and _his hair looks soft,_ and _short but cute_ and then filing those details in a folder called To Consider Later, which Richie guesses is like a spank bank, but fancier. 

“Are you even fucking listening?” the guys says, and takes a step closer to him, all fervor and flushed cheeks.  
Richie’s brain comes back online. He glares down at the man. “Oh, you mean to you calling me an asshole? Yeah, I did catch some of that.”  
“God, _unbelievable_ ,” the stranger bites out. Richie sees from the corner of his eye a couple of passer-bys stop to look at them—it’s unclear if it’s because they recognized Richie or if they’re simply interested in the altercation. “Just because you’re rich—”

A woman is elbowing her friend to get her attention, and she points her phone camera at him. _Shit._ That’s _exactly_ the sort of thing he wanted to avoid.

Richie feels anger flare up in his gut, and he grabs the guy’s arm to drag him away from the sidewalk. There’s a small alley on his right, hidden between two buildings, and he walks there in two long strides with the stranger in tow.  
When they’re out of the streetlamps’ cones of light, he relaxes, but only marginally. “Okay, buddy, let me make something clear,” Richie hisses—because the other options are yelling or breaking into tears—and jams a finger into the stranger’s chest.  
His toned, firm chest, covered only by a shirt stretched tight over it between the open lapels of his jean jacket.  
“I’ve had a very, _very_ long day—I don’t owe you my time just because you, fucking, saw me on TV that one time. What the fuck are you doing yelling at people in the streets? If you hate my new Netflix special or whatever, just go tweet about it like a normal person. Dickhead.”

The guy blinks at him twice in rapid succession, confusion replacing anger on his face. Only for a split second, though—he quickly goes back to glaring at Richie. “What the fuck are you talking about?” he spits out, gesticulating wildly, “I was yelling at you because of your fucking _car._ ”

His car? What does his precious Porsche 911 Carrera 4S Cabriolet have to do with anything?

“Uh?”  
“ _Uh_ my ass,” the other says, stepping closer to Richie until he can point a finger right at his face. Historically, Richie’s priorities have always been out of whack, and so the thing he chooses to focus on is how sexy this stranger’s cheekbones look from up close. “You parked too close to mine, and I couldn’t fucking leave! I’ve been waiting for the owner of that flashy piece of eurotrash to show up for the past three hours.”  
“So you don’t—”  
“Know who you are?” he finishes. “No. I think I’d remember those stupid fucking glasses.”

Richie sputters, speechless for a second. He's not on, like, _Brad Pitt_ levels of fame, but he's been enough on TV lately—between his movies, comedy specials and interviews on Late Night Shows—that it's hard to find someone who's _never_ before seen him. _Or_ his stupid fucking glasses. 

"Well, well—I don’t know if I believe you," Richie says, indignant at surface level, but pleasantly surprised down in a more honest part of himself.  
The shorter man snickers, and it might be wishful thinking on Richie's part, but he's pretty sure his eyes flick down to Richie's lips for second. “I’m sorry to break the news to you, but there _are_ people out there who don’t give a fuck about D-list celebrities.”  
“Excuse me? I’m not a D-list—”  
“Oh God, shut up," the other groans, defying all laws of physics by inching even closer to Richie without letting any part of their bodies touch. "I’m trying to tell you to move your fucking car so I can go home.”

“Oh, is that what you’re doing?" Richie’s raising his voice to hide how turned on he is by having this hot, shorter guy yell at him. Because that's something he's into now, apparently. "Silly me, I thought you were trying to seduce me,” he says, only half joking, alluding to the grand total of five inches left between them.  
The stranger, still fuming, lowers his doe eyes and gives Richie a once over that he can feel right down to the base of his spine. “Well, is it fucking working?” he says in the end.  
 _What the hell is going on_ , Richie thinks, but still has the presence of mind to respond with, “Maybe it fucking is!”

They stare at each other, breathing fast from all the yelling.  
Richie's not sure if he's about to get punched or something more pleasant, and as he's placing a bet with himself on which option is more likely, the stranger surges up to close the distance between them, and suddenly, they're kissing. 

It's not that good at first—his mouth lands all wrong on Richie's, teeth clashing, too much strength behind it. But Richie tilts his head, and lets his lips fall open with a gasp, and suddenly it turns _good_ , good enough to make him moan low in his throat. 

It starts filthy, all tongue and teeth, and just keeps getting worse. _Better_ , Richie would argue, although with the way the stranger is nipping at his bottom lip, he doesn’t have it in him to care about semantics. 

Their bodies are pressed together, and the knowledge that the shorter man is up on his tiptoes to reach his mouth goes straight to Richie's cock. He's already half-hard where he's set a dirty grind against the stranger's stomach.  
It's embarrassing that a kiss is all it took to turn him on _this_ much, especially when this entire making-out-in-a-dirty-alley-with-a-guy-while-still-not-out-to-the-public is a _colossally_ bad idea. But fuck, what is Richie supposed to do? _Not_ let the mean twunk with nice cheekbones push a knee between his legs and moan into his mouth?

He's not made of _stone_. Insert mandatory rock-hard joke here. 

So yeah, here he is. Pushing said stranger against the brick wall so he can lick a hot strip up his neck, and hear him groan right in Richie's ear.

And if Richie's hands under the guy's shirt are trembling slightly; if he's acting a touch too desperate for someone who was being yelled at not two minutes ago, then so what? He just remembered he hasn't done this in a while, that’s all, and in the back of his mind there's already a voice snickering, _how low have you sunk that this is the best you can get, the most honest you can get—_

Nevermind. The man's abs contract under his fingers when Richie palms his way up his torso, and that’s nice, very nice. That’s enough. 

The other's hand sinks in his hair, and he tugs back until Richie has to break off the kiss, shivering through a moan. "Do that again," he says, and he'd be mortified at his own loss of inhibitions if his brain hadn’t melted out of his ears already.  
The stranger smiles, white teeth and red-bitten lips. "Cute," he comments and tugs again at Richie's curls. "Pick me up?"

Richie groans, dropping his head on the guy's shoulder, squeezing handfuls of his ass in his palms. "How are you real?" he says, and sucks a mark on the exposed line of collarbone under his lips.  
"I'm not," the other gasps, his arms tightening around Richie's shoulders, back arching closer to him. "You got robbed and hit your head—you're currently in a coma. Now what's the point of making out with a 6 foot something himbo if he won't, fucking _, pick me up_ and make me come, Jesus, what a waste—" 

_God, this guy's so fucking rude_. Richie grabs the back of his thighs and hoists him up, stopping him mid-sentence with a bruising kiss. 

He curls their tongues together until his own knees risk buckling under him, and pulls away just enough to speak. "Did you fucking call me a _himbo_?"  
The other man tightens his legs around Richie’s waist, rocking their hips together so that Richie’s eyes go glassy, and he doesn’t give much of a shit about what he’s getting called anymore. “Yeah, hot and dumb, get with the program.”  
“Oh, you little shit, see if I make you come now,” Richie says, already picturing how it would be to sink to his knees and take this stranger’s cock in his mouth, the heady weight of it on his tongue.  
God, fuck, it really _has_ been a while.  
“Come back to my place,” he breathes out, letting the other man bite at his jaw, giving himself beard-burn on Richie’s stubbles.  
“I’d rather not get murdered, thank you.”  
Richie rolls his eyes, thrusts up against the other’s hips to hear his cut-off moan gasped on his neck. “I could murder—fuck, yeah, _do that_ —I could murder you here as well, no need to take you home. And I’m rich and famous, did I—mention that? That I’m rich and famous?”  
“I still don’t believe you,” the stranger mumbles on Richie’s lips, and melts into another toe-curling kiss.  
“I have a Jacuzzi,” Richie says when they part, “do you wanna fuck in a Jacuzzi?”  
The other man laughs, breathless and flushed red and really fucking sexy with his hair all fucked up by Richie’s hands. “Sounds unsanit—oh, shit, wait.”

Richie’s confused for a moment, then he feels something vibrate in the man’s back pocket. He lowers his legs back to the ground, and the stranger fishes out his phone, his free hand still wrapped around Richie’s bicep. His eyes scan the screen, probably reading a text, and he curses under his breath.  
“What?” Richie asks, struggling to clear his head from the fog of _want._ _  
_The other man sighs, frustrated, and adjusts his pants over the obvious bulge at the crotch. “I—I need to leave.”  
“Oh. Uh, okay. Right now?”  
“Yeah. No Jacuzzi for me, I’m afraid.” He give Richie another once-over, ranking his doe eyes—who needs eyelashes that _long_ , what the fuck—up his body until he’s holding Richie’s gaze. He seems to be considering saying something, then he bites his lips and moves away. “I need to pick up something at work before they close, I can walk there. Please, move your fucking car before I get back.”

He starts walking away before Richie can process what’s happening—mainly, that he’s being left alone in a dark alley with a painful hard-on still throbbing in his pants, and that apparently he won’t get to christen his hot tub tonight, after all.  
“Wait,” he calls after the brunet. “if you have to leave me high and dry like this, at least tell me your name. Gotta have something to moan tonight when I think about you, you know?” he risks adding.

The other man stops briefly in his tracks, but doesn’t look back at Richie. “Eddie,” he says, and goes out of sight when he rounds the corner.

Richie takes a deep breath and slips his glasses off so he can rub at his eyes.  
What a fucking stupid idea this was—and kind of humiliating, now that he looks at it when he doesn’t have, you know, a tongue down his throat.  
Richie’s never been particularly difficult to seduce, easily falling in bed with any guy who would give him the time of day—not that that’s happened often lately. Sex isn’t worth the agonizing wait after every random hook-up, when he’s sure they’ll sell the story about how they fucked world-renowned closet case Trashmouth Tozier to the first interested tabloid.  
And yet, he jumped at the chance this time. Being called dumb by a guy and immediately proposing to take him home is a new low even for him.

The guy— _Eddie_ —had no idea who Richie is, though, or at least faked it excellently. It made him less scared. 

Well, either way, it doesn’t matter now. It’s probably for the best, actually, that Eddie left before they got arrested for public indecency or something just as idiotic and career-ruining. 

(Richie still jots his number down on an old receipt he finds in his pocket and leaves it under the windscreen wiper of Eddie’s car. After some thinking, he adds an _xo, Richie_ as well.) 

♡♡♡

It’s an incessant beeping that wakes him up the morning after. 

Richie paws at the bedside table, where he thinks he left his phone before passing out, and sends the clock smashing on the floor before he finds what he’s looking for. He accepts the incoming call blindly, without even checking who it is.  
“ _Richie_ ,” Bev says in his ear, in that tone of voice that Richie recognizes as an attempt not to freak him out. Every time she uses it Richie automatically prepares for the worst, because it’s not often that something can make Beverly Marsh lose her chill.  
“Mmnhgh?” Richie mumbles in the receiver. It was supposed to sound something like, _did you kill someone, and do you need help hiding the body?_ _  
_“Yeah, yeah, good morning,” she says, hurried. Someone speaks in the background; other noises like paper rustling. “We have a problem. I don’t want to alarm you, because I’m sure we can fix it in no time, and you know how the internet is, people forget—”  
 _“Check Twitter!”_

Richie sits up in bed and shoves on his glasses, trying to wake himself up. “Was that Stan? Are you having a meeting at—what time is it?”  
“10am, not that early,” Bev answers.  
The muffled sounds of people fighting over something filters through, followed by cut-off swears from Beverly, and then it’s Stan’s voice that fills Richie’s ear. “Still too early for a PR meeting in my opinion. Richie, please check your Twitter, and then maybe you can give us some explanations? As I mentioned, we are aware it’s all fake news but those photos _are_ real.” Stan sighs, and the sound crackles in Richie’s ear through the phone. “Why can’t you let us relax, once in a while? This is a colossal waste of time, and I hope you’re ready to do something extremely dramatic to clear your name. Why am I even asking? You’re probably going to have the time of your life—”

Richie woke up so abruptly that his brain is still lagging behind, but never has he been told to check his Twitter when something _good_ has happened—like being nominated for an award or, more importantly, being followed back by Rihanna.  
Even worse, Stan sounds frantic. Stan _never_ sounds frantic.  
Richie presses a hand to his stomach to stifle the impending feeling of panic. “Staniel, when you start enouncianting every word like that, you really worry me,” he jokes, doing his hardest to put off the end of the call. “You sound like my high school English teacher—you’ve never met her, lucky you, but she had this way of biting her sentences out. I thought one day her dentures would get loose and go snapping around the class like those toys, you know the ones? Kinda sexy, though; not her dentures, _duh_ , she just had these big fat t—”  
“Richie, stop, you’re rambling. Relax, and please go—”  
“Check my Twitter, yeah,” he finishes. “I got it. Bye.”

He ends the call before he can hear Stan get all soft and reassure him that it’s all going to be alright, which he does any time he involuntarily snaps at Richie (even if, more often than not, it’s well-deserved.)  
Richie briefly considers turning his phone off and going back to bed, delaying the inevitable, but in the end, he does open the app.  
A brief scroll through his mentions is enough to tell him that:

  1. Beverly and Stan were justified in their alarm.
  2. Twitter was overall a _bad idea_.
  3. He should stop ever leaving the house.



There’s tweet after tweet from disappointed fans, people stating that ‘they’ve always known’, others who say they’re reserving judgement, for now—his notifications are a shit show, his DM’s are in an even worse state, and he doesn’t dare search for his name to see what they’re saying about him without tweeting him directly.  
Mostly, though, the tweets are replies to a main one from TMZ (which _never_ bodes well).  
Richie clicks on it, and he’s briefly shocked by what he sees.

It’s a picture of Eddie and him, from last night.  
It might not be HD, but the quality is high enough that he can clearly discern the frown on Eddie’s face, and the way Richie is gripping his arm—it must have been taken seconds before he dragged Eddie to the privacy of the alley. If only he’d been quicker, this mess could have been avoided.  
It’s the tweet itself that catches his eye next.  
“@trahsmouth_tozier Shows His True Colors”, which he must admit is a good clickbait title—: menacing, but vague enough that you need to read the article to know _what the tea is_ , or whatever the fuck kids are saying these days. 

He already has an idea of the contents of the article, what with everyone posting screenshots of it and throwing words around like _homophobi_ c and _cancelled_ , but his morbid curiosity pushes him to read the whole thing. 

Richie Tozier Shows His True Colors.

Well, some might say that they saw this coming. 

Richie Tozier (@trashmouth_tozier on Twitter) released a new comedy special on Netflix not long ago, after a successful comedy tour around the US—the reviews were positive, but will that be enough to keep him in the good graces of the public this time?  
Tozier was seen last night arguing with a young man in the streets of LA, and the witnesses made it clear: the tone of the conversation was _not_ friendly. Some even stated that the this mysterious man’s sexuality was the reason of the altercation—not that it comes as a surprise, knowing Trashmouth’s brand of frat boy, aggressively heterosexual humour.  
He certainly is not the first comedian to get in trouble because of their own bigotry, nor the first child star who goes off the rails later in their life. Do we have to remind you of Tozier’s less than stellar track record in the last few years?  
Oh, and apparently the argument ended with Tozier dragging the young man away from the eyes of the few people milling around. We still don’t know the identity of this stranger, but we can’t help but being worried for him: is he okay? 

He closes the article.  
“So,” he tells himself, falling back against his pillow, “I’m getting canceled for being homophobic.”

It sounds surreal to say out loud, considering that not two minutes after the picture was taken he was busy rubbing his dick on another man—but nevermind that. The part his brain is stuck on now, before it inevitably realizes that all of this is possibly career-ruining, is that TMZ…made up the entire story?

Richie scoffs. Why is he so surprised? This is _peak_ TMZ behaviour: creating a narrative out of thin air, all to fit a photo that someone sold them for scraps of what the site will earn in ad revenue with the real article.  
Jumping straight to accusing Richie of a hate crime seems too much even for a scummy tabloid, though. Richie scans the picture of Eddie and him again, trying to fall in the mindset of a _quote-unquote journalist_ who wants to throw him under the bus—and oh, yeah, there is it. Eddie’s denim jacket was covered in rainbow-colored patches and pins, something Richie now remembers noticing immediately last night. _Out and proud,_ he had thought, not without a hint of bitterness, _must be nice_. 

The irony of the situation doesn’t escape him: if only he’d been brave enough to follow Eddie’s example, none of this bullshit would have happened. 

It doesn’t help that Eddie looks stunning and fashionably mean in the photo, with his gelled hair and the unimpressed arch of his brows; meanwhile Richie resembles an oversized, pissed off raccoon more than anything. Damn, he really needs to do something about those eyebags...

Richie picks up his phone again and opens the chat with Bev. She might _technically_ be his employee, but, much like with Stan, he considers her more of a good friend he has to pay once in a while. When Richie’s career had started taking off, and suddenly he had people relying on him for their livelihood, he realized that surrounding himself with yes-men wouldn’t work for him—he needed someone to help him keep his feet straight to the ground, and Stan made it painfully clear that the so-called friends he kept around were anything but.  
He says that Bev keeps Richie humble. Richie tends to agree, considering he’s won two Emmys and has yet to feel cooler than her, ever. 

_Fuuuuuuuck_ , he writes down on his phone, and hits send. 

↣ _You don’t have to tell me. #richietozierisoverparty is number 3 on trending_

 _no way lol i’m impressed_ ↢

↣ _Look at you, pretending not to give a shit._

 _i mean you don’t know what actually happened, it is pretty funny_ ↢ _  
  
_

↣ _Yeah, I may have an idea actually. Can Stan and I come over?_ _  
_↣ _There’s one thing we’d rather tell you in person_

 _oh wow thanx for the anxiety bev. of course you can come over_ ↢ _  
__bring alcohol_ ↢

↣ _I’m not bringing alcohol_

 _:(_ ↢

↣ _Okay, maybe just some wine_

 _:)_ ↢

Richie ends up deleting the Twitter app from his phone as he waits for his friends to arrive. And Instagram. And Facebook, but that one only because he didn’t know he still had it in his phone and hasn’t opened it in five years anyway.  
As a distraction, he drags himself to the shower, and it’s only when he already has his hand around his half-hard cock that he realizes he can’t jerk off in peace. It’s hardly a distraction when the only thing he can about is Eddie, who looked oh so very hot when he asked Richie to make him come, and who sounded like he would have died if Richie had refused him.  
Excellent spank bank material if you ask him, but as of now it only serves to remind Richie that people hate him—and that’s sure to kill the boner of any pathological people-pleaser. 

The intercom starts buzzing, and Richie quickly finishes toweling his hair dry before opening the gates to let Stan and Bev through. He puts on a pair of sweatpants and a clean shirt, and he’s done just in time to unlock the door and catch Bev with her fist raised to knock.  
“Hi, guys,” he says cheerfully, letting his friends step through. “Welcome to my demise. Anyone want some coffee?”

Stan sighs and passes a hand through his unruly curls. The lack of product in his hair tells Richie that he’s more stressed than he wants to let on. “It’s not your _demise_ , Richie, relax.”  
“ _You_ don’t look relaxed.”  
“Guess whose fault that is?”  
“We are not doing this right now,” interjects Bev, who’s been witness to enough of their endless arguing to know how it ends: Stan gets irritated, Richie gets even more jittery, and nothing actually gets done. “Richie, let me get straight to the point. You really have only one option here.”  
He steals the bottle of wine from her hands and lets himself fall on the couch. “Which is?”

“You need to come out. Like, publicly.”  
“Ah!” he snorts, already shaking his head, “No, no way. That can’t be the only option.”  
It doesn’t matter that not even twenty minutes ago he was thinking that coming out would solve most of his current problems—even the _idea_ is enough to make him break into hives. 

“It really is,” Stan says, as gently as his analytical way of being permits. “Richie, you’re sort of, well—you’re being blackmailed.”

Richie blinks. That’s a particular string of words he’s never heard directed at him before. “The fuck? Care to elaborate?”  
Bev clears her throat. “Yeah, that’s what I didn’t want to mention on the phone. The same people who took the photos of you arguing with that man contacted us. They told us that pic was the only one they sold to TMZ, but they also photographed you two while you were—”  
“ _Furiously making out against a wall,_ and I’m quoting what they said directly,” finishes Stan. “Now, Richie, can I please know what jumped into your head that made you think that was a good idea?”

Richie groans. “I don’t fucking know! I was stressed about the meeting, and angry—and then comes this guy, this smoking hot stranger in his stupid denim jacket and polo, and he’s all like,”—he falls in an imitation of Eddie’s voice, or what he can remember from the night before—” _Your car is trash, your glasses are dumb, you’re a fucking himbo, please bang me against the brickwall in this dirty-ass alley_ , and what was I supposed to do? Say _no_?”  
“Exactly!” Stan exclaims, rubbing his temples, “Say, thanks, but no thanks! You’re not a hormonal teenager anymore, Richie, come on.”  
“I am at heart,” Richie moans, and promptly plants his face in one of his throw pillows in an attempt to smother himself. 

Someone slips the wine bottle out of his hand and sets it on the coffee table with a _clink_. A moment later Richie feels Bev’s delicate hand rub his shoulder, and he melts a little into the comforting touch.  
“Listen, you obviously can’t go back and stop this from happening. Maybe a simple statement that this is all fake news _could_ work—but it already gained too much traction, more than we could have predicted. And Richie—you can’t just pay off these people: they still will have the photos, and they will hold them over your head for as long as it profits them.”  
Her voice is gentle, but Richie remains with his head sunk in the pillow. It’d be nice if he could hide there for a while—until all this blows over, and he won’t be forced to face the consequences of his stupid, _stupid_ actions.  
“You need to take what power they have back,” adds Stan. Richie hears him shift closer on the sofa. “I know that this isn’t how you wanted to come out—”  
“I wasn’t fucking planning to _ever_ come out,” he grumbles.  
“— _but_ it still shouldn’t be at the hands of vultures who want to make money off it. If nothing else, then do it out of spite.”

That coaxes a smile out of him, if one smushed against lozenge fabric. He raises his head, and his eyes fall on Stan’s face, who looks more pissed off at the prospect of being blackmailed than Richie himself. Bev, from behind Richie, drapes herself over his back and hugs him tight. 

_I’ll still have them_ , he thinks, and the weight that has been pressing over his chest all morning becomes a tad more bearable, _if everything else goes to shit, I’ll still have them._

“Out of spite,” he repeats. “I think I can manage that. So you guys have a plan?”  
Bev sighs and drops her forehead on Richie’s shoulder. Stan diverts his eyes like he suddenly wants nothing to do with this conversation. “We do,” she says, “but I doubt you’re gonna like it.”  
Richie grins. “Awesome. Let’s do it.”


	2. Guess where I fall in the Venn diagram between horny and broke

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If you subscribed before June 23th: hi! You might remember this fic from back in February. I got back into writing it, and decided to edit, extend and split into two the original first chapter. If you're still interested in reading this story, I highly suggest starting back from chapter 1. There are roughly 3k of new material added throughout, and some details about the plot that weren't present before. I'm sorry for the inconvenience! 
> 
> To the people who subscribed after June 23th: you're good, fam. All caught up. I hope you enjoy this chapter!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Eddie's unhealthy view of one night stands; brief mention of STDS; a totally not autobiographical, but also pretty graphic description of Eddie's panic attack; the author's lack of understanding of how the fuck American colleges work.

“He _was_ fucking famous,” Eddie whispers to the empty room. 

He’s been staring at the tweet Mike tagged him in for the past half hour, sat on the uncomfortable stool in their kitchen, phone in his hand, in a state of complete disbelief.

|| **@MikeyH -** @ _eddie_k_ is that you with @ _trashmouth_tozier_? why the hell haven’t you told me anything?

The tweet was a response to _another tweet_ , this one by TMZ, with a picture of Eddie looking annoying with the man from last night—who happens to be Richie Tozier, a name that means nothing to Eddie but also happens to have ten million followers on Twitter. 

Actor, comedian, a net worth with too many zeroes for Eddie to process when he googled it—and Eddie made out with him last night. And it was _so hot_ his brain melted down somewhere in his crotch region, because that’s the only explanation for what he almost did: accept the invite to go back to his place.  
He imagines a world where this morning he’d woken up in a ridiculously large bed, something only a celebrity could afford, with all six-feet-two of said celebrity...spooning him, maybe. Or brewing him a cup of fuck-off good, Colombian coffee.

Instead he woke up on his own shitty mattress, in the miniscule apartment he shares with Mike—the best two college students can afford in L.A.  
It’s nice, don’t get him wrong, lumpy mattress notwithstanding. Eddie keeps it spotless, and despite the minimalist style of furniture they were forced to settle with, Mike’s art keeps the place lively and cozy. When he’d moved in as Mike’s new roommate, and realized they were both students at UCLA, Eddie had thought for sure Mike was an art major—turns out he’s getting a degree in history, and painting is his way of coping with the stress. 

Eddie wishes he had such a healthy hobby to help him with that. Apparently his way of relieving tension is getting pushed against a brick wall by a stranger—which is simply too out of character for him to accept. 

It felt _really_ nice, though. Unwittingly, his eyes glass over as he thinks again about what could have happened if he’d just given in and accepted Richie’s offer...

He shakes himself out of the daydream. Jesus, it’s a good thing that Myra sent him a text when she did, informing him that he’d left his house keys there at work.  
Richie is attractive and famous and rich—he can sleep with whomever he wants, whenever he wants it. He probably has syphilis or something. Eddie’s glad he was interrupted before they went too far. _Glad_. Yep, that’s the right word. 

Oh God, you can’t get syphilis from kissing, right? Dry humping? Ugh, ew, he can’t believe he let himself do all that in a dirty fucking alley. _He_ , who can’t even use public transportation without dousing himself in hand sanitizer right after—

He finds Mike’s number in his recent calls and clicks on his contact with shaky hands.  
“I need you to tell me that syphilis can’t be transmitted through saliva,” he says as soon as he hears the line being picked up.  
Mike, who’s known Eddie long enough to not even blink at his idiosyncrasies, immediately answers: “Syphilis can’t be transmitted through saliva.”  
“Thanks.”  
“You’re welcome. Now, can you tell me what the hell happened? I opened up Twitter this morning, and the first thing I see is this huge scandal about Richie Tozier and _you_ in the smack middle of it!”  
Eddie groans and lays his head on the kitchen table. “I didn’t know he was _famous_ , okay?”  
“Of course you didn’t, you’re pop culture repulsive,” he sighs. “Are you okay, though?”  
“Why wouldn’t I be okay?” Eddie asks, frowning at Mike’s apprehensive tone.  
“Well, I don’t know what actually happened, but it sounded kinda rough from the article. What a shitty person, I wouldn’t have guessed...I followed him on Twitter, he always seemed chill—goes to show you never really know these celebrities, right?”

Eddie, who’s gotten progressively more confused as Mike spoke, frowns even harder. “What are you talking about?”  
There’s a pause on the other end of the line. “Wh—he said some homophobic shit to you?” he says, tone suggesting that he’s not so sure about it anymore.  
“Uh?”  
“And then dragged you away?”  
“ _Uh?_ Mike, _Mike_.” Eddie springs up from the stool, and it seems like the events of the previous night are catching up to him all of a sudden, because he’s close to hyperventilating. “I argued with Richie fucking Tozier because he parked his car too close to mine, and...yes, well, he did drag me to an alley, but it was because people had started filming us and taking pictures, we were, like, causing a scene. I yelled, he yelled, then he said he was famous, and I told him I’ve never heard of his D-list-celebrity ass, and _I don’t know what happened—”_ he sinks the hand not holding the phone in his hair, trying in vain to calm down—“but two seconds later, we were kissing! Like _, filthy_ —it’s kinda gross now that I think about it, but also, it felt amazing, and I was fully ready to, to…” He trails off with a sigh. “To go home with him. A stranger. _Me._ ”

A second of silence, and then Mike’s warm laughter fills his ear.  
“What’s so fucking _funny_ , dickwad?”  
“Is that why you were worried about syphilis?” Mike asks, still wheezing.  
“Yes! I’m obviously in the middle of a quarter-life crisis if I’m letting a stranger tonguefuck me in an alley!”  
“ _Tonguefuck you?”_ _  
_“That’s not the point,” Eddie says, waving a dismissive hand around like Mike could somehow see him. “The point is: I highly doubt that Richie Tozier is homophobic, and he sure as fuck didn’t try to beat me up or whatever you were implying. Where did you hear that?”  
“Eddie,” Mike laughs, “the tweet I tagged you in has an article attached. From TMZ? Ever heard of it?”

Eddie’s panic deflates, replaced entirely by confusion.  
He’d been so transfixed by seeing a photo of himself with thousands of retweets—and reliving his brief meeting with Richie—that he hadn’t even stopped to think about _why_ everyone was talking about it.  
“Go read the article,” Mike says when the silence stretches out, “and then call me back. Alright?”  
“Alright,” Eddie echoes, and ends the call without even saying goodbye. 

He pulls up the page and reads it three times over before the meaning really sinks in. He gets stuck for some long minutes over _‘Some even stated that this mysterious man’s sexuality was the reason of the altercation’,_ trying to figure out how things got so twisted, and whether or not he likes the title of Mysterious Man. 

Back to Twitter. A quick glance to the trending topics tells him that the hashtag ‘Richie Tozier is over party’ is far up on the list. Eddie’s seen this exact thing happen so many times lately—to Youtubers, actors, producers—that he wouldn’t have noticed this particular scandal hadn’t he been part of it.  
Ah, well—sucks to be Tozier. Eddie still has his number from when Richie left it tucked under his windshield wiper, and he _could_ at least send him a text. Tell him that this is his karmic punishment for parking his Porsche like a class A asshole.  
However, Eddie reasons, texting Richie would mean exposing himself, and he has no intention to do so. The only thing Richie knows is Eddie’s first name and the model of his car, which means that he can’t find him, which means that Eddie will _not_ be dragged into this whole mess. 

And then his phone pings with a Twitter DM from @beverly_marsh, and Eddie’s dreams of a life lived in blissful anonymity goes up in flames.  
  


The DM reads as follows: 

Hello, my name is Beverly Marsh and I’m part of Richie Tozier’s PR team.  
One of your friends, @MikeyH, tagged you in a tweet implying that you were the man at the center of the accusations against my client. Richie has taken a look at your profile and confirmed that it was indeed you.  
I’m contacting you to ask if you’re willing to help up clear my client’s name. You would be compensated, of course—here’s our offer. If you’re interested, please contact me ASAP. 

And there’s a number with too many zeroes for Eddie, a broke college student, to reasonably process at this hour in the morning. _It must be a number she wants me to call_ , he thinks, but no: there’s a dollar sign right before. That’s the money Eddie’s being offered.

Well. What’s he going to do? Say no?

♡♡♡

Eddie writes back to Beverly, and because he doesn’t know the etiquette to follow when you’re caught up in a celebrity scandal, he overthinks his phrasing for half an hour and addresses her as _Miss Marsh_.  
It feels stupid doing so when they’re exchanging DMs on the same app where he once drunk-posted shirtless pics of himself, only his running shorts on, ‘cause he felt lonely and horny. They has since been deleted, with no little amount of shame on his part (some people he sees regularly in class follow his account), but still, it’s the principle of the matter.

They soon switch to email, and there’s a lot of back and forth to decide when and where they can meet, which legal documents he’ll need to sign—and a healthy dose of moments where Eddie asks himself what the _fuck_ he’s doing and almost drops everything. It’s always Mike who brings him back on track.  
“But Eddie,” he says, and unleashes his lethal puppy dog eyes on his poor, unsuspecting victim, “don’t you think you could use that money?”

And, yeah, that’s a compelling argument.

His research on Richie starts almost as an accident.

Eddie is uncomfortably familiar with hospitals. He’s dreaded them enough as a _patient_ —all the hours lost in the waiting room as a kid, with Sonia fussing over him for every bruise he couldn’t explain away, every suspicious sneeze in the middle of flu season. He’d hated the pitying looks from the many doctors who had to deal with his mom as much as he’d hated the artificial, nauseating scent of bleach and citrus that tried to cover the smell of disease. When he got admitted to medical school, Eddie figured he’d get desensitized fast as soon as he got a peak behind the curtain of what it means to work in a hospital. He knew he’d have to spend the first few years on cleaning duty, trailing after nurses and doctors whose job was to boss him around—but hey, Eddie _likes_ cleaning. He does it gladly and thoroughly. Cleanliness is the one aspect of his personality that no one has ever complained about, and as long as the skin of his hands—scrubbed smooth and pale by the chemicals he uses too liberally—goes unnoticed, Eddie has no reason to think of it as a _problem_.  
The point is, he thought he’d have the time of his life mopping up hospital floors. Turns out, not so much.  
The first time a nurse asked Eddie to clean a bedpan for the patient in room 148, he’d almost had a panic attack, and had to flee to the bathroom before someone saw him cry like a baby. He’d closed himself in the first free stall he found, and raised the collar of his green scrub over his head, so that the air he was desperately gasping in smelled like his own sweat and deodorant, and not like that _awful_ artificial scent of lemon.  
It’d been far from the last time that happened. After a while Eddie started hiding his phone in the waistband of his pants, and relied on the breathing exercises app he downloaded to keep his...surprise bathroom visit as short as possible. He’s pretty sure some of his classmates think he suffers from IBS.

One day he’s closed in his favorite bathroom on the third floor, repeatedly hissing at himself _to stop being a fucking pussy_ (a patient he was helping off his bed had almost puked on him, and Eddie had _not_ reacted professionally), when his trusty iBreath app fails him. The calming graphic do nothing to help. Breath in, breath out— _go fuck yourself_ , he’s hyperventilating, and even though the rational part of his brain is aware of it, the rest of his body thinks he’s about to die. There are panicked tears clouding his vision, and the hand clutched desperately over his heart, as if the touch could somehow _stop_ the furious drumming, feels more and more like a lead weight detached from his arm. _I need a hug_ , Eddie thinks, and _I can’t hug myself,_ and suddenly he remembers Richie.  
Richie has nice arms. Eddie bets he gives very good hugs. He remembers how Richie’s biceps had flexed under his hands when he picked Eddie up, how his weight had been enough to flatten Eddie against the wall, no real force behind it.  
It takes a few tries to get his fingers to collaborate, but he manages to switch to the Youtube app and punch in Richie’s name in the search bar. He figures that if he has to die in this stupid bathroom, he might as well do it while watching those nice arms—and shoulders, and chest, and jawline—in live action. 

Eddie, in the end, _doesn’t_ die in that stupid bathroom. He watches a compilation of Richie’s interviews on Conan instead, long enough for his breathing to calm down, and learns that Richie laughs through all his jokes, and he doesn’t need to get to the punchline to make them funny.

Here’s a list of other things Eddie learns about Richie—some in that same bathroom, some when he remembers to bring headphones with him to his most boring classes, some when he’s cocooned under his covers and fighting off sleep:

  1. There are enough people thirsting after him that the well-curated playlist _Clips of Richie Tozier that make me want to tear my house apart_ contains thirty-five videos, every single one nearing—or well over—one million views.
  2. He was born in Maine, surprisingly close to Eddie’s own hometown.
  3. He has starred in _three_ movies alongside Adam Sandler, but he was under 15 years old for all three, so Eddie guesses he can forgive him.
  4. He is—funny. Well, this one’s tricky: Eddie hates pretty much every comedy Richie’s starred in, but in the interviews where he doesn’t have a script to follow he’s almost offensively charming, in that he overshadows the Late Night hosts without even trying, but goes red in the face when he makes the live audience laugh. 
  5. Everyone thinks he’s oh so very straight. If you ask Eddie, it’s clear Richie’s overcompensating—and _no_ , he doesn’t think so only because he had the clear proof of it pressed between his open legs for those five minutes. 



Eddie finds himself reluctantly liking him, but he’s under no illusion: for all he knows, the guy’s a patented asshole, and the happy-go-lucky persona he puts on for the cameras could very well just be that, a persona. After all, Eddie’s only spoken to him only once, and they’d both been yelling for most of the time...there hadn't been much talking in the second part of their impromptu meeting. 

He doesn’t get as much as a text from Richie throughout the week and half of his constant communication with Beverly. She and one Stanley Uris are apparently taking care of everything, and they mention their employer only in passing, if at all.  
The day Eddie finally sits in the backseat of the black SUV that will bring him to Richie’s house, he hasn’t really processed that he will actually _meet_ him. In, like, twenty minutes. 

Well—Eddie glances at his watch—probably closer to an hour, thanks to L.A. traffic.

He barely pays attention to where the driver is going, too busy biting his nails and smoothing nonexistent wrinkles on his shirt to relieve the stress.  
At some point he gets a text from Mike, which only reads _go get that bread_ and a string of emojis that are probably supposed to show his support but make him all the more nervous. _What does the flamenco dancer one even_ mean _?_ Eddie thinks, and that’s when the car pulls to a stop and someone opens the door for him.

Eddie snaps his eyes away from the phone, and finds a good looking man—nice fitted suit, neat dirty-blond curls combed back—waiting for him.  
“Hi, I’m Stanley Uris,” he says, and extends a hand for Eddie to shake when he finally manages to get out of the car. “We spoke through email.”  
“Hi, yes, I remember. Nice to meet you.”  
“Likewise. I want to apologize for getting you involved in this mess, but you’re saving us, and Richie, a lot of trouble. Thank you for that.” The man smiles, kind and relaxed, and pats a hand on Eddie’s shoulder to invite him to follow along. 

Despite being completely out of his element—the house Stan is ushering him to is more of a fucking mansion, all wide glass windows and modern lines—Eddie can breathe a little easier. He doesn’t know what he expected; maybe being looked down upon for his cheap shoes and cheaper haircut, or to be met by dismissive show-biz people too busy yelling in their Bluetooth sets to let him know what the fuck he’s supposed to be doing here. 

Okay, maybe his view of how actors live is based entirely on Hollywood movies from the early 2000’s. Was it the Bluetooth sets thing that gave it away? Yeah, he thought so.

Anyway, he’s glad that it’s just a nice man with rimless glasses instead of all that. Stanley can’t be that much older than Eddie himself, and he calls his employer by his first name, so Eddie tentatively hopes this whole affair will be more chill than he’s worked it up to be.

Beverly mentioned taking some photos today.  
Who knows, maybe they’ll just ask him to take a selfie with Richie and post it on Instagram with the caption, _we’re actually good friends, @TMZ you guys are just mean,_ and that will be it. He’ll get his check and be back to his apartment in time for dinner. 

“It’s no problem, really,” he tells Stan as he follows him to the threshold of the house’s main door. “As I mentioned to your, uh, colleague? Beverly? I was very surprised to see how they’ve spun the story just to get clicks. I mean, I didn’t even know Richie was _famous_ when I met him that night.”  
Stanley just hums and shoots him a sideways glance before ringing the bell, like he doesn’t believe that part one bit—which, fair enough. Eddie himself struggles to believe that he’d never stumbled upon some of Richie’s work before last week. 

It’s Beverly who opens the door—Eddie recognizes her from the profile picture on Twitter, although it’s in an artful black and white, so he’s briefly shocked by the vibrant red of her hair. After the mandatory _nice to meet you’s,_ Eddie’s guided through the house until they reach a spacious living room.

Of all the things in the room that he could gape at—from the massive TV to the wall-length library chock-full of books, DVDs and CDs—it’s the array of pillows on the sofa that Eddie envies the most. He even has a vision of himself grabbing the two fuller ones and making a run for it, although he chalks that up to the inhuman quantity of coffee he drank today to survive an all-nighter spent writing an essay. Between that, and the anxiety about today’s meeting, he slept two hours at most. It makes sense that pillows are his deepest desire as of now. 

The wide glass door on the far side of the room filters the daylight, glistening on the surface of a pool and reflecting on the white stone floor on its perimeter. Eddie frowns when a woman comes into view, big sunglasses over her tanned face and a camera around her neck.  
The hypothesis that he’s here just to take a bunch of selfies flies out of the window—they’re obviously setting up for something more complicated.  
He’s about to finally ask for clarifications when the unmistakable sound of flip flops slapping the floor distracts him. 

The flip flops, and Richie who’s wearing them, appear only seconds later. He has two margaritas carefully held in his hands and a red Hawaiian shirt, half-unbuttoned to show the tanned line of his collarbones. His eyes immediately fall on Eddie, and his face stretches in a wide smile. “Eddie Spaghetti! Together at last.”

Eddie sort of forgot that Richie is, well—really hot. Sure, he’s looked at his face plenty of times in the past few days, but there’s something about the cameras that flatten him, wash him out, like Richie’s incapable of sitting still long enough for his image to come into sharp focus.

Oh, it’s in sharp focus now. He bends down to settle the drinks on the coffee table, and Eddie catches a glimpse of his chest hair and the dusting on freckles on the bridge of his nose, and he immediately gets hot under the collar.  
He’s starting to remember why he made out with this guy three seconds after meeting him. He’s also remembering Richie’s innate talent for pissing him off.

“Eddie _Spaghetti?_ ” Eddie asks, already frowning, and the wink Richie throws his way is as annoying as it is charming.  
“Yeah,” he explains with a shrug. He rounds on Eddie and lets himself fall on the sofa next to where Bev is already sitting. “I can never remember your ridiculous last name, so Spaghetti it is.”  
“It’s _Kaspbrak._ It’s Polish.”  
“Yeah, well, Spaghetti rhymes. I win.”  
“You win? You’re thirty-five and still go by _Richie_ , and you think you _win_?”  
“Hey, now! I’m just _thirty_ , fuck you very much!”

Eddie opens his mouth again, probably to say something like _yeah, sure, and for how long have you been thirty?_ or _how about you fuck me yourself instead,_ because he is, incredibly, as turned on by this stupid back and forth as he was the other night—but then he catches the incredulous smirk on Beverly’s face, and he remembers that he still has some shame left in his body. He shuts his mouth close.

“Wow,” she says, shaking her head in disbelief, “you two have a lot of, uh—chemistry, that’s for sure.”  
Stan scoffs, and looks up from his phone where he was busy typing something. “Is that what we’re calling sexual tension now?”

Eddie goes beet red, deeply embarrassed that his attraction for Richie is obvious even to a complete stranger, while Richie just cackles, loud and annoying.

 _God_ , Eddie has such a shit taste in men. 

He’s saved from having to say anything by Stan himself, who first smacks the back of Richie’s head to shut him up, and then invites Eddie to sit down with an open palm and a warm smile. Eddie obliges.  
“So, I’m sure Beverly already mentioned via email why you’re here. We just need you to take some photos with Richie, out there near the pool,” Stan says, and nods at the area outside Richie’s living room that Eddie already noticed, and where two young men are busy setting up the scene. “Clarissa, our photographer, won’t be there with you. She needs to take the photos from far away to mimic the style of paparazzi’s pics.”  
“You know, grainy, unflattering angles, deeply invasive. Sounds familiar?” Bev adds, getting a rueful smile out of both Eddie and Richie.  
“You guys are skipping the best part, though,” Richie says. He catches Eddie’s eyes and waggles his eyebrows. “We’ll have to _smooch_ for the cameras.”

Eddie’s brain goes momentarily offline. “What?”  
“Stan the Man over here specifically stated that he wants to see some tongue action as well.”  
“I did _not,”_ the other man argues, looking flustered for the first time since Eddie met him. He figures it’s a fair payback for the comment he made earlier. “But, yes: if it’s okay with you, Eddie, you two should kiss for the photos.”  
“Uh, what are you going to do with them?” Eddie asks, trying to keep his tone unaffected and probably missing the mark by several miles.  
It’s Beverly who answers this time. “They will get ‘leaked’ on Twitter. Hopefully, people will recognize you as the same guy in the original TMZ article, and the public opinion will switch back on Richie’s side. Hard to call a guy homophobic when he’s kissing another man.”

“I guess it makes sense, yes,” Eddie concedes.  
This part of show business is already giving him a headache—all this plotting and planning, manipulating the odds in your favor just to save face. Being under the spotlight like Richie is right now would kill him in under a week, and here he is, voluntary subjecting himself to just that.

Richie grins again, tongue-in-cheek and teasing, and keeps his eyes trained on Eddie in a way that makes him either want to hide or go sit on his lap. “So? Is that a yes to the hot make out sesh?”  
Eddie’s brain vividly replays how Richie said _see if I make you come now_ the other night, voice low and hands big and rough where they held him up, and he _knows_ a blush is creeping up his neck—so, when he nods his agreement, he keeps his eyes trained on Beverly and doesn’t spare Richie even a glance. 

♡♡♡

“Fancy seeing you here,” Richie drawls in a British accent that even Eddie, as annoyed and flustered as he is, has to recognize as impeccable. 

They’re both half-laying, half-sitting on two sunbeds, sipping on the margaritas Richie prepared earlier (apparently he has a fully stocked bar set in his house? Eddie can’t even imagine having that much disposable income), their naked feet dipped in the pool water.  
It’s just the two of them out there: Beverly and Stan are still inside, doing whatever it is that PR teams do, while Clarissa-the-photographer is hidden somewhere with a clear view of the pool, trying her best to take realistically creepy shots of them. 

Eddie angrily sucks the drink through his straw. “Shut up,” he says, “let’s just get this done and over with.”  
“Dude, you need to relax.” Richie shifts closer to him, and starts playing with the hem of the white linen shirt Beverly made Eddie wear for the occasion. “We’re supposed to look cozy and intimate—get that stick out of your ass.”

Eddie huffs and rolls his eyes, but deep down, he feels guilty.  
He’s just embarrassed, okay? He’s alone with a fucking Hollywood star, who also happens to be a hot, older man that Eddie is pathetically attracted to, and now they’re supposed to make out for the whole world to see—and when Richie’s fingers sneak under the hem of his shirt to touch his skin, Eddie suddenly remembers there’s a Jacuzzi somewhere in this place, and that Richie wants to fuck him in it, and so, yeah, he’s so fucking _embarrassed._  
And when he’s embarrassed his only way to deal with it is by acting like an asshole. 

He grabs at Richie’s wrist to stop the way his fingers are inching closer to the waistband of his jeans. Eddie means to drop his hand immediately after, he really does, but Richie’s skin is smooth and warm from the L.A. sun, so he keeps holding on instead.  
“I’m out of my depth, here,” he manages to say. He holds Richie’s gaze this time, however hot his face goes at the unfaltering attention—and maybe Richie has more emotional intelligence than he would have given him credit for, or maybe Eddie just looks _that_ pathetic, because Richie immediately drops his arrogant playboy act.  
“We’ve done this before,” he whispers, tilting his head closer to Eddie’s. “Really, I don’t bite—unless you ask.”  
Eddie cracks a smile, charmed despite his best efforts not to be, and before he knows it he’s being kissed within a inch of his life. 

His shocked gasp turns into a breathy moan when Richie licks into his mouth, curling their tongues together until Eddie’s eyes roll back behind his closed eyelids.  
Somewhere between the feeling of one of Richie’s big hands holding on the back of his neck, and softly biting down on his spit-slicked lips, Eddie manages to think, _does he alway kiss like this?_ _  
_Deep and filthy from the get-go, all pent up energy and roaming hands; like his time is limited, and can’t afford to waste a single second. Or like he’s on a mission to melt the other person’s brain in case they change their minds halfway through, and he risks being left high and dry—which, fair enough, Eddie did just that last time, so this could very well be the way that he kisses Eddie and Eddie only. A stupid thought, he’s aware (who does he _think_ he is?) but still one that makes him swing his legs over Richie’s until he’s straddling his hips.  
“Oh, fuck,” Richie says when the change in position breaks off their kiss. Eddie takes a moment to look at him: he’s a _mess_ , face flushed a pretty shade of red and his glasses all askew on his freckled nose, and Eddie wants this man to absolutely _ruin_ him at the first chance he gets.  
He bends down to kiss him again, his fingers cupping his strong jaw, and Richie starts palming at his ass, tugging him closer until their bodies are flush together. He dips his fingers in the waistband of Eddie’s pants, skin on skin, and it’s exactly then that a phone starts ringing. 

The sounds startles them both. After a moment of confusion, Richie groans and picks it up from the small table on his right, next to their discarded drinks.  
He frowns when he reads the name, and then brings the phone up to his ear. “Bev?” he asks, and wraps an arm around Eddie’s lower back to stop the retreat Eddie was already planning. “Aren’t you literally two minutes from me? What do you—oh. Yeah, mh mh. Understandable.” He ends the call.  
“What did she say?” Eddie asks, voice low and rough from his arousal. He clears his throat, trying to dissipate the fog in his head, but still doesn’t make a move to get off Richie’s lap.  
“That Clarissa got all she needed like five minutes ago and that she’s not being paid enough to photograph our softcore porn.”  
“Oh.”  
“Yeah. I think I’ll give her a raise.”  
“She definitely deserves it.”

There’s a moment of silence where they just look at each other with more intensity than strictly necessary, then the tension gets too much for Eddie and he finally climbs down his lap. Richie follows his example and stands up as well, stretching to his full height when they’re still toe-to-toe—Eddie busies himself with smoothing down his shirt, lest he goes fucking _insane_ thinking too hard about how easily Richie towers over him. 

“So, we’re done here?” Eddie asks when he’s gained a modicum of composure back.  
Richie fixes his glasses and winks down at him with a grin on his face—wide and blinding, if somewhat forced. “Yeah, shortstack. Don’t act like you didn’t enjoy it.”

♡♡♡

The photos ‘mysteriously’ appear on Twitter later that evening. 

Eddie would know, because it seems like half of the entire user base is tagging him on them—and how the _fuck_ did they find his account, anyway?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you thought. [rea_of_sunshine](rea_of_sunshine), I owe you my life--I'm sorry I subjected you to this twice.


	3. Cunning work ethics

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Formal date?” Richie echoes, the smile now toned down to something softer. “I didn’t know you were taking this so seriously. Is that why you’re wearing...are those Gucci loafers?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of the chapter is a Pink Guy lyric, of all things.
> 
> Warnings: mentions of Richie receiving homophobic messages, disappointing lack of smut (I'm sorry, we'll get there soon), the author's very obvious hate for Twitter.

Richie stares at his phone screen until his eyes start watering, thumb hovering the _tweet_ button. 

The photos of him and Eddie appeared on Twitter two hours ago, courtesy of a fake account set up by Beverly—and _really, Marsh?_ he thought after seeing the _Marshmallow_ handle and the empty profile picture, _couldn’t have put a bit more effort in it?_

Not that it mattered. The photos are clearly real, that is absolutely Richie staring up at the same guy from the infamous TMZ article, caught seconds before kissing with Richie’s lips curled in a smile—and then the second one, God fucking _help_ _him_ the second one, Eddie’s hands sunk in his hair, Richie’s forearm wrapped all the way around his slim waist to press them closer, so desperate the lines of his tensed muscles are visible even in the grainy photo. And them kissing for real this time, teasing smile gone because Richie was too busy curling his tongue behind Eddie’s teeth to do much else, and he’s never seen himself kiss someone, a _man_ , like this before, and when he first set eyes on it the first time he thought with burning shame, _I look hot_. 

It was probably just Eddie’s own hotness rubbing off on him or something. 

Let’s not think about rubbing off on Eddie for _two fucking seconds_ , please. 

The point is, _the point is_ : no one cared that the original account was obviously created just to post the pictures, because as soon as the right people retweeted (reposted, _the thieves_ ), they spread like wildfires. 

Oh, to be a fan of celebrity drama and see it all unfold before your eyes! Imagine: you’re mindlessly opening and closing the same four apps in a row, bored out of your mind, praying for something interesting to happen to one of those rich idiots who are supposed to entertain you. And suddenly, _gasp_! Richie Tozier, the same dumbass who can’t tell a joke without involving his dick somehow, is being _cancelled_? For being _homophobic_? Well, who would have fucking guessed, right, that someone with a notoriously frat-boyish fanbase could turn up to be an asshole outside of his comedy as well. You read the TMZ article, you gasp at the incriminating photo—and then, because others may pretend to be genuinely outraged, but you’re no coward and also you’re home by yourself so who gives a shit, you grin wide and start reading through the comments, delighted. God, this is _fun_ , isn’t it? The hashtags, the weeping fans, the _arguments_. Disappointing that no one else is coming forward with other shitty things Tozier did, which you were looking forward to; even more disappointing that Tozier himself went the _I do not see, I do not hear_ route with this. Come on, not even a passive-aggressive remark? A screenshot of the iPhone notes app with a rambly apology? Youtubers would _never_.  
But then, a couple of days later, just when you’re starting to get bored with the whole thing...two photos emerge from the depth of the dark web, or the SD card of whichever sleazy paparazzo took them. Richie Tozier, making out with _a guy_ , making out with _the same guy_ that he supposedly almost punched in the middle of the streets. Now, that’s a plot twist! You clutch your metaphorical perls. You’re having the time of your life. 

And Richie is, first and foremost, a people-pleaser. If he has to be at the center of a scandal where he’s both accused of being homophobic _and_ forced to come out, he’ll make sure it’s the most _fun_ scandal of the decade. So he stops staring at the words he wrote roughly twenty minutes ago and, bright screen blinding him and covers bunched up to his shoulders in his dark bedroom, he hits _send tweet_. 

|| **@trashmouth_tozier -** Can’t a guy just have a secret boyfriend in peace? @ _eddie_k_ please tell them to stop being mean

Richie turns off his phone and throws it somewhere on the stupid fucking _gigantic_ bed he bought. It seemed like the right debauched thing to do at the time, but it turned out to be more on the depressing side because he never has someone beside him to fill the space.  
He sinks his face in his pillow, not even remotely close to actually sleeping. _Oh God_ , he thinks, hysterical, _Oh my fucking God, I’m officially out of the closet. For like, the entire world._ And then, because he’s never been able to focus on the right things in life, and it’s mostly an inconvenience but sometimes a blessing: _I called him my boyfriend._

Oh, Eddie’ll be so _pissed_ when he finds out, inevitably inundated by notifications thank to Richie’s tag—Richie pictures the way he’ll scrunch up his nose and squint those doe eyes of his, muttering something along the lines of _that’s so juvenile_. Richie wants to eat him for breakfast. 

His fake boyfriend. His feisty, cute, sexy fake boyfriend. 

Richie smiles in his pillow. Oh, he’s _so_ fucked. 

♡♡♡ 

He falls asleep at some point, lulled by the white noise of his AC, and the next time he opens his eyes it’s to his digital clock screaming at him that’s it ten am, _wake the fuck up._

He has shit all to do, actually, fuck you very much, alarm. His involvement in the rewritings of his own damn movie is less than minimal. To be frank, it still baffles him that they greenlit Richie and Bill’s idea for a horror movie parody with a heavy focus on romance, and yet he wasn’t prepared for the sheer amount of changes they made to the script. He hates that it’s turning into _Scary Movie But Worse_ —and to think that he was so _proud_ of the original story. 

Whatever. Richie has enough self-awareness left not to cry about how hard his life is on a bed more expensive than some people’s apartment. 

More than anything else, he’s furious Bill’s behalf.  
They met on the set of one of the first comedies Richie starred in in an important role, when Bill was still working as a PA trying to break into the industry. He’s a talented writer, if one in need of a patient editor to keep his often wild story ideas in check, and, surprisingly, he and Richie make a good team. The months they spent working on the script, trying to mix Bill’s interest in Gothic Americana with Richie’s more comedic take on the plot, were some of the most fun and productive of Richie’s life. Bill was ecstatic when Universal picked up the project, and Richie for once bit his tongue and didn’t voice his doubts at the reluctant yes they got from the producers...his suspicions were proved right not long after. _We’re going to call in some other writers to help you clean up the script_ , they said, and turns out they meant they didn’t think Richie could shoulder a more dramatic role, so better to lean on the comedy aspect of it as much as possible. And no, no way they can cast someone else as the lead!, the Trashmouth brand is going strong, _we need to capitalize on that, Richie, we’re sure you understand._

He paws around the covers until he finds the cold rectangle of his phone and turns it on to face the consequences of his last night’s actions.  
With bleary eyes he scans the screen, and, speak of the devil, the latest message is from _Big Bill_ 👅👑 himself. _Congrats Rich! Live your truth_ , it reads, which is the most cliché sentence Richie’s ever heard in his life, but it comes from Bill, so he knows he’s speaking from the heart. His big, stupidly sincere heart.  
_stole that one from my mom’s inspirational embroidered pillow? thank u man, love u_ he writes back, and then does what he’s been dreading since the moment he woke up. He opens Twitter. 

There seems to be mostly positive comments. Some memes, of course, and one person that asks _who’s this fucking guy, again?_ , whose level of indifference to the whole affair Richie aspires to achieve. It doesn’t take long to find the first insults and shows of disappointment, like Richie having a _boyfriend_ is a personal affront they can’t forgive—those ones sting, an old hurt that he’s been living with since he was a kid, when Hollywood was starting to become his home, and whenever he looked being gay was the butt of the joke. Times have changed, but the scars remained. 

If those asshole with awkward close-ups of their faces as their profile pictures stop watching his stuff, then so be it. _Good fucking riddance_. 

He’s managed to work himself up to a state of self-righteous anger when he has the awful idea of searching for his name.  
He’s expecting more of the same: supportive tweets, some homophobic slur here and there, threads of people using his coming out ( _forced outing_ , more like, but let’s not focus on semantics) as an excuse to argue about anything and everything. But other gay people, seemingly on the younger side, saying that they don’t believe him, don’t accept him, don’t forgive the problematic jokes he’s made in the past, is...unsettling. Well, _confusing_ , more than anything. Was Richie too naive to think that a _lol i’m actually gay_ tweet would win them over? 

There’s not much to argue against, though: those photos _were_ a publicity stunt, Richie _does_ have a movie to promote ( _ugh_ , don’t fucking remind him), Richie _has_ parroted some less-than-progressive jokes back in 2010 or so. What defense does he have? That no, he swears, _he’s gay for real?_ Isn’t that what he’s paying Eddie for?

He huffs, and buries his face in the cool fabric of his pillow for a long moment. The way his glasses press painfully on his nose just pisses him off further, and he reasons that he might as well check the rest of his notifications _now_ while he’s in this shitty mood—and hopefully only ruin his morning instead of the whole day.  
The bar on his phone remains full no matter how many times he opens all the social media apps to get rid of them. Whoever thought that making notifications so _persistent_ was a good idea deserves to be at least under house arrest. 

That's why it takes him so long to notice one unread message in particular, sitting inconspicuously between a _proud of you, buddy_ email from his manager and one from Amazon notifying him that his three Beer&Soda Guzzler Helmets will be delivered to his house tomorrow. When the fuck did he order _those_?

Richie's brain focuses on that pressing matter only for a split second, however, before he reads the text in between, from an unknown number. 

↣ _Secret boyfriend? That's incredibly obnoxious. Almost enough to do a 180 and go right back to being cute._

A smile stretches wide over Richie's cheeks. Prissy comment? Proper use of punctuation even through text? A direct insult to Richie's person? They might not know each other very well, but the message is very _Eddie._  
Putting aside the attraction he feels for the man, and the late-night fantasies of rolling around in his expensive sheets with him, Richie recognizes that they are, at most, acquaintances. And yet Eddie’s personality is loud, and bigger than his lithe frame can contain—Richie’s witnessed first hand the rapid switches of his eyebrows and cutting hand gestures, and how quick an embarrassed blush was to come right after. It endeared him immensely, yesterday, to watch Eddie react to every teasing joke Richie threw his way in an attempt to make his mask of professionalism slip. 

The bickering was fun, and sexy, and Richie won’t deny that it fueled his physical attraction for Eddie even more, which was stark and immediate anyway, so no point in trying to keep it at bay now. He’d be happy to go through this fake dating ordeal with only few, studied touches for the sake of whichever camera is pointed at them (or more private ones, if Eddie will allow it, if Eddie is interested.)  
But there’ll be trouble for Richie if Eddie keeps showing hints of vulnerability like he did yesterday by the pool, when they were alone and close enough that whispering was all that was needed to hear each other. Richie’s _starved_ for something more meaningful, he’ll take the bait if Eddie uses those big eyes on him again, if he says something like _I’m out of my depth, here_ that makes him sound young, younger still. 

He’s being paid, Richie has to remember. He’s doing this for the money. 

( _You should have learned by now._ )

He unblocks his phone, the screen gone black when Richie was lost in his thoughts. The timestamp tells him that Eddie sent the text right after Richie made the tweet last night. He quickly saves the number under the name Spaghetti Nation, hoping that it will make a vein pop in Eddie’s forehead when he inevitably notices, followed by the angry emoji and one of each heart type he finds, and then pulls up the chat again. 

_the only thing my brain retained from that message is that u think im cute_ ↢

Richie has time to drag himself out of bed and go eat some overpriced, no-nutritional-value cereal before he gets an answer from Eddie. 

_↣_ _0/100 for reading comprehension. Another victim of the American education system._

 _eds! u made a joke! so proud of u, babe 💞 if u r interested in a job as a ghostwriter hit me up_ _↢_

 _↣_ _You use ghostwriters? Can I sell the news to the press?_

 _buddy u r going to get tired of the press real soon, trust me. but yeah i have some people who write jokes for me sometimes. turns out im not that funny on my own_ _↢_

 _↣_ _Dude, did you turn off autocorrect so you can write like one of the cool kids? No one writes like that anymore, what the fuck_ _  
_ _↣_ _And for what it’s worth, I think you’re funny when you don’t have a script_ _  
_ _↣_ _Or so I've heard_

 _eddie_ _↢_

 _↣_ _From people on the internet_

 _did u watch my stuff on youtube? stalker 💞💞💞_ _↢_

_↣_ _I don't even know what YouTube is_

Richie laughs, and he gets dangerously close to twirling his hair around a finger like a high schooler in front of their crush. He does spew cereal pretty much everywhere though, so there’s that. 

The conversation with Eddie dwindles to a stop when he tells Richie that he has to get to class—which, is news to Richie that he’s in college, but now that he looks back to their interactions, he does fit to a T the image of starving college student who’s trying to survive L.A. Eddie does not give him the impression of someone who came to the city of angels with few money and many dreams, though—Richie tries to imagine him saying, _I’m an actor, but I also wait tables for now_ , and the image just doesn’t fit. It’s more likely that Eddie wouldn’t be able to contain an eye roll if he heard someone else introduce themselves like that. 

After Eddie leaves Richie’s text _have a good time in class!_ (tongue emoji, squirt emoji, books emoji) on read (very rude), Richie gets the _brilliant_ idea of stalking his Twitter to get to know his fake boyfriend a bit better. He logs in a burner account he made a while ago, when he wanted to lurk without accidentally liking something from his main, and searches Eddie’s name.

He’s not surprised to see that his profile is tame, and rarely active. Eddie doesn’t seem the type who would have a good time on Twitter, considering how easy he is to rile up about the most inconsequential of topics—let alone the type who would put on the internet anything classifiable as saucy. Or as a _thirst trap,_ a term Richie was forced to learn against his will after Beverly posted on her Instagram a picture of them at the beach, in which he just happened to be shirtless. 

He does, however, find an adorable photo of Eddie smiling as his profile picture, dimples out in full force. Richie immediately saves it and sets it as Eddie’s contact icon on his phone, and scrolls to see a quote retweet to Richie’s own coming out tweet. 

**|| @eddie_k** Finally, I was waiting for the moment I could use your fame to get more followers. 

Richie smiles. So _this_ is how they’re going to play it.  
The smart idea (Stan’s idea, probably) would be to play the roles of a lovey-dovey couple that supports each other through hard times—the fatal blow to all the people who dug up, or even _made_ up, stuff about Richie in the past few days to cash in the #RichieTozierisoveparty, and who now look like the real assholes. But damn, if he isn’t glad that this is the angle Eddie took instead. Richie doesn’t know how to be a cute, loving boyfriend because he’s never been in a relationship that went past, you know, drunk handjobs in club bathrooms. But this? This he can riff off of, he can make it fun, entertaining. 

He scrolls through the 254 replies to the tweet, which consist mostly of key smashes, gif reactions, and Eddie’s own name shouted back at him in caps lock. One person is...worried about the age gap between Eddie and Richie, and is asking Eddie if he’s safe? _What?_

“Isn’t he in his _mid-twenties_?” Richie asks aloud to his empty kitchen, then shakes his head and decides he can’t let Random Kpop Stan get to his head. God, he _hates_ this fucking app. 

To distract himself, he taps on the retweet button with the hope of turning this into a back-and-forth that will keep him occupied for a while.  
He writes _so all this time, you were using me for clout?_ and sends the tweet. He opens up his private chat with Eddie again.

 _u saw my tweet? now u could say that u r actually using me for my massive cock :)_ _↢_

Richie expects the message to go unread, instead he gets a reply before the phone screen has time to go black. 

↣ _Now I get why they make you use a ghostwriter._

He can hear Eddie’s deadpan tone as he reads it, and it makes a smile grow wide on his face.  
Four minutes go by—but who’s counting?—before a new tweet appears on Eddie’s profile. As expected, it’s a retweet of Richie’s:

 **|| @eddie_k -** _@trashmouth_tozier_ Don’t pretend you know what clout means, you’re on the wrong side of thirty.

 _I did have to look it up on Urban Dictionary,_ Richie doesn’t say. Instead: 

|| **@trashmouth_tozier** **-** _@eddie_k_ i turned 30 two months ago, you gremlin

|| **@eddie_k -** _@trashmouth_tozier_ Being in your thirties is in itself the wrong side

|| **@trashmout_tozier** \- _@eddie_k_ babe that makes no fucking sense 

|| **@eddie_k -** _@trashmouth_tozier_ I see the dementia is already kicking in

Richie covers his face with his free hand, and laughs softly in delight. 

Quick question: on a scale from one to ten, how pathetic is it to get turned on by a Twitter interaction where you got called old in three different ways? Asking for a friend. 

♡♡♡

“Eddie, is everything alright?”

Eddie, intent on drying a glass so furiously the friction almost makes the rag catch on fire, looks up at Ben. “Fine,” he bites out, which, admittedly, makes no sense as an answer.  
Ben stops sweeping the floor in front of the counter and sets the full weight of his puppy dog eyes on Eddie. “You know you can talk to me about anything, right?”  
“Ugh,” Eddie groans, “you’re so _earnest_. How have you survived in this world?”  
Ben shrugs, a small smile on his handsome face. “I have no idea. But being kind to people pays off sometimes.”  
“It’s like having a conversation with a golden retriever,” Eddie says, and it’s a testament to how well Ben knows him that he laughs at the fake contempt in Eddie’s voice instead of being offended. Eddie’s humour often falls flat, and he passes off as, what’s the word?, an asshole. 

He sighs and finally puts away the squeaky-clean glass next to the neat row of the ones he’s already dried. “I’m just stressed, Ben—school, this job, _my mom._ You don’t need to listen to me ramble about the same things over and over again, really. I already feel like a broken record.” He hums, considers his options. “I think I’ll try drawing a face on a soccer ball and vent to it instead.”  
A warm hand lands on Eddie’s shoulder and squeezes affectionately. “I don’t mind listening, Eddie. _I_ can be your soccer ball.”  
“Wow,” Eddie deadpans, “that’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”  
“You have very low standards, then.” Ben’s face open in a wide smile when Eddie laughs, and he pats Eddie’s shoulder twice before leaning back. He picks up his broom from where he left it leaning on the bar counter and goes back to the task of sweeping the floor. “ _So_ ,” he says, with so much forced innocence in that single syllable that you would think he’s trying to get Eddie to confess to a murder.  
He decides to play dumb. “So?”  
“I’ve heard, you know. Things.”  
Eddie knows where this is going, and he doesn’t like it. “That’s an incredible skill, Ben. Have you been practicing a lot?”  
Ben huffs a laugh and drops the act. “Come on, Eddie, you can’t fault me for being curious! I’ve always avoided Hollywood gossip—it feels invasive, you know, the paparazzi photos, reading stuff about people’s love lives that should stay private…” He trails off with a vague gesture of his hand, which, coming from someone as private as Ben, Eddie can guess represents the _Big Brother is watching_ mentality that living under the limelight demands. “It’s just surreal seeing you tweet back and forth with Richie Tozier, that’s all.”

Eddie sighs. He wouldn’t describe bickering with Richie on Twitter surreal, be it because Eddie had no idea of how famous he was when they met the first time, or because the public roast sessions they go through almost every day now are simply fun, and _easy—_ however surreal _is_ a good word for the experience of seeing his follower count rise up to an astronomical number. It went up 10k in a _week._ He has people offering him _brand deals_ in his DMs. 

He feels a little guilty about keeping the details secret from Ben. Mike, as his roommate, saw the events unfold live, but Ben was left in the dark. Eddie sees him mostly at work, and they don’t have many shifts in common; plus, he’d rather not talk about Richie around Myra and his other coworkers, who have taken on the habit of staring at Eddie wide-eyed since this whole thing started.  
This would be a good moment to get Ben up to speed, though. This late at night, they’re the only two left in the bar, and there’s not much to do apart from cleaning up before they can close and go home. 

“Yeah,” Eddie says, “I’m sorry I haven’t told you anything yet. I couldn’t find the right moment, and I didn’t want to text you because, uh—I’m not exactly allowed to talk about this.”  
Ben’s eyebrows go up, and he makes his way closer to the counter where Eddie is still drying the last few glasses. “And why is that?”  
“Well, Richie’s publicist made me sign a NDA a few days ago,” he explains. “Officially, I’m supposed to keep all details about my relationship with Tozier secret, but then Beverly...winked at me? She said, _you can’t tell anyone the truth,_ but she put ‘anyone’ in air quotes, I have no idea what the fuck she meant by that.” _And I’m terrified of disappointing authoritative figures so I didn’t ask for explanations_ , he doesn’t add.  
When he looks up at Ben, he finds him blushing to the tips of his hair. “Beverly?” he asks, which strikes Eddie as weird. The publicist’s name was arguably the _least_ interesting detail about what Eddie just said.  
“Yeah? Beverly Marsh? Do you know her?”  
The blush goes from rouge to a strong shade of vermillion. “Red hair?” Ben adds, which at least goes well with the theme his cheeks have got going. 

Oh. _Oh._ Ben’s been crushing on a mysterious client that Eddie’s never managed to meet before for _months_ —there have been countless times when Eddie’s arrived at work to find Ben staring off in the distance with a dopey smile on his face, and the reason always was _Bev came by to get a coffee._ _  
_ It didn’t even cross Eddie’s mind that both Beverly’s could be the same person. 

“Ben,” he says, biting back a smirk, “is she the girl you’re in love with?”  
Ben’s forehead hits the counter, followed by the most heartfelt sigh Eddie’s ever witnessed—he reminds him, once again, of a big fluffy dog. “She’s so _beautiful_ ,” Ben says, like it pains him.  
Eddie pats his soft, perfect hair. “I know,” he agrees, “I might be gay but I do have eyes.”  
“And _smart_.”  
“Yeah, she is. And funny, too.”  
“And _funny_! I don’t deserve her.”  
“Not that you’ve asked her out yet or anything,” Eddie says, and immediately feels guilty. “Sorry, that was rude. Right? Yeah, that was rude.”  
Ben, bless his soul, is too nice to tell him to fuck off, but he does hum in agreement.  
“You’re like, the ideal guy, Ben,” Eddie tries again, a bit awkward. “She’d be lucky to have you. Uh, do you still want to hear what’s happening with Tozier?”  
Ben straightens up and gives Eddie a grateful smile that he doesn’t feel he deserves. “Yes, please, distract me from my pining.”

So Eddie tells him about the argument, and the photos posted by TMZ—belatedly, he adds in vague details the make out session(s) he’s still embarrassed he enjoyed so much—and how he agreed to play Richie’s fake boyfriend in exchange for a ridiculous sum of money. 

“That’s why I was acting weirder than usual, today—he texted me, and told me his manager was pushing to get us on a date this Saturday, at some fancy restaurant,” he finishes.  
Ben looks equal parts shocked and intrigued. “Wow, you’re basically living in a rom-com. And how is he in person?”  
Eddie scoffs, rolls his eyes. “Unbelievably annoying.” Ben laughs, and he leaves it at that. 

No need to add that the reason Eddie’s so nervous about this fake, publicity stunt of a date is that he’s genuinely looking forward to it. 

♡♡♡

He was lying. He didn’t even know it, but Eddie was _lying._

He is not, in fact, looking forward to the date. Looking forward might be the wrong term, actually, considering that Saturday is _today,_ and he has to see Richie in _two hours_. 

After his talk with Ben at the start of the week, Eddie didn’t spare much thought to his first official fake date with a Hollywood star. He had his internship at the hospital to worry about Tuesday and Wednesday—then on Thursday he had a panic attack when he was asked to change a patient’s catheter, and he’s spent every waking moment since asking himself 1) why did he let his mom convince him that “nurse” was a feasible profession for someone with medical anxiety and 2) what the fuck is he doing with his life, like, in general. 

“I like the other shirt better,” Mike says from where he’s sitting cross-legged on Eddie’s bed, playing the role of fashion stylist for him. “Where the hell did you get those shoes, by the way?”  
Eddie looks down at his new loafers. Truth to be told, some of his mental space _has_ been dedicated to how nice genuine Italian leather feels on his feet.  
“They’re a gift from Tozier,” Eddie explains, studying how the light reflects on the polished tips. “I mean, Beverly picked them for me—she also gave me a belt and a watch, said I have to ‘look the part.’ But she bought them with Tozier’s money.”  
In the reflection of the mirror, he sees Mike smirk. “His money, uh?”  
Eddie squeezes his eyes, breathing deeply. “Please, don’t say it,” he begs.  
“Doesn’t that make him your sugar daddy?” Mike says anyway, because he’s a _dick_. Eddie groans, fishes a pair of clean balled socks from his drawer just to throw them at Mike’s face. 

As he’s closing himself in the bathroom to finish getting ready, he hears Mike yell, _you didn’t deny it!,_ and then laugh at Eddie’s extremely telling silence. 

Eddie needs to find new, less evil friends. 

♡♡♡

Once again, when it’s time to get to the restaurant, Eddie gets picked up by a driver. 

The car is the same inconspicuous black SUV from before, utilitarian and yet screaming of wealth—more to Eddie’s taste than Richie’s obnoxious red sports car, although that’s not saying much.  
He opens the back door and quickly slides on the seat, expecting to be in company of only the driver, or maybe Beverly for one last debrief about his fake-boyfriend role. 

He finds Richie instead. 

Richie Tozier, beloved child-actor-turned-comedy-star according to the Wikipedia article Eddie _certainly_ wasn’t reading as he finished styling his hair earlier, is sprawled sideways over the shiny leather, smiling bright.  
“What,” Eddie says in lieu of a greeting, “the fuck are you wearing.”  
The question mark gets lost somewhere along the way. Richie’s grin stretches wide over his stupidly charming face, and he looks down at his shirt like he’s shocked to see it there. “What, this old thing? I think it was a gag gift from whoever the fuck, it’s been sitting in my drawer for years.”  
The car starts moving along the street, but Eddie is so busy looking unimpressed he barely notices. “And you decided to wear it _tonight_? To a formal date?”  
Richie swings his long legs off the seat, and the move brings him closer to where Eddie is strapped in by the belt. His thigh presses briefly against Eddie’s, and to distract himself from the faint heat he can feel through the layers of fabric, Eddie looks back down at Richie’s shirt: written boldly across his chest, _This Was The Only Shirt I Had With No Cum On It._ And then floral embroidery underneath, in the style of a grandma’s throw pillow. 

“Formal date?” Richie echoes, the smile now toned down to something softer. His front teeth poke his bottom lip, Eddie notices, not enough to be called buck teeth but close enough, and he finds himself thinking that that little detail makes up for Richie’s disgusting choice of clothing. “I didn’t know you were taking this so seriously. Is that why you’re wearing...are those Gucci loafers?”  
Eddie pushes his feet forward with a curt move and hides them under the edge of the front seat. “You paid for those.”  
Richie laughs, and then drops his voice in an exaggerated purr, complete with a half-lidded look from behind his glasses. “I sure did. Only the best for _my_ baby.”  
It’s not attractive, on account of the fact that Richie’s also wagging his eyebrow like a cartoon character and his shirt has the word _cum_ on it, but it is cute. Unfortunately, it is cute.  
“I think we should see other people,” Eddie says, and he forces himself not to smile as Richie snorts and falls back against his seat. 

♡♡♡ 

“Are they hiding?” Eddie whispers. “Are they hiding in the bushes?”

His bushbaby eyes have gone wide and intense; he looks mildly terrified. Richie looks down at him like he’s lost his mind.  
“The paparazzi,” Eddie adds, miming a camera in front of his face. “Do I need to act all lovesick over you in case they’re already taking pictures? That’s gonna take a toll on me, man.”  
“Okay, first of all,” Richie says, utterly charmed, “ouch. And secondly no, what the fuck? They’re not hiding in the _bushes_ , they’ll catch us at the restaurant in an hour or so.”

Daniel dropped them off a couple of streets away from the restaurant, a request that Richie made in advance for Eddie’s benefit—there aren’t supposed to be any photographers waiting from them right outside, but in case there are, Richie wanted to avoid throwing Eddie in the metaphorical lion’s den so abruptly. This way, walking side by side in the cool summer evening, they’ll be able to spot them from afar. And Eddie will turn on his Lovesick Mode, or whatever, if needed. 

Eddie relaxes, but only marginally. His long-sleeved white shirt sits nicely on his tense shoulders and shows off the golden tan of his skin where it’s left bare—a sliver of his wrists, a hint of collarbone between the first two open buttons. If Beverly picked the rest of his outfit along with the shoes, then he’ll give her a raise so generous that his accountant will ask for a wellness check on him. But no, Eddie looks comfortable in his clothes; if he’s anxious, it’s about the hypothetical presence of cartoonishly sneaky paparazzi, or the dinner itself—he simply dresses like this.  
Richie can’t wait to see them together in photo, and he’ll be surprised if anyone buys the lie they’re selling; they look less like a couple and more like a rich douchebag with no taste and the bored companion he hired as a date. 

“How do you know they’ll be here in a hour?” Eddie asks as they round the corner into the busier street where the restaurant is.  
A few people look their way; Richie slings an arm around Eddie’s shoulder, and Eddie, apart from a quick surprised look to where Richie’s paler hand brushes on his arm, takes it in stride.  
“Because that’s how Stan arranged it.”  
“Wait, that’s—” Eddie says, “that’s how that works? You work with the _paparazzi_?”  
He says the word with such genuine contempt, like he holds a lifelong grudge against them (which Richie guesses he will from now on, considering the only reason he’s involved in this mess is that he got papped alongside Richie), that it makes Richie grin in delight. Two girls, both leaning against the wall with cigarettes dangling from their fingers, giggle and whisper as they pass by, and Eddie glares at them with ferocity; Richie’s grin stretches wider until his cheeks hurt.  
_What a weird little guy_ , he thinks, and tightens his arm around Eddie’s shoulder now that he has an excuse to do so.  
“Yeah, it’s like a symbiotic relationship,” Richie explains. “They get money from taking pictures of celebrities, and celebrities feed off the attention those pictures get them.”  
Eddie frowns those thick eyebrows of his, tonight more eye-catching than usual without his wavy hair to grab the attention—it’s combed back, neat and tidy, kept in place by gel. Everything about him looks _expensive,_ in a way that Richie has never learned to appreciate before now; he keeps getting the weird impulse of shoving his own wallet in the back pocket of Eddie’s dark slacks to complete the look.  
“You call getting blackmailed into coming out a symbiotic relationship?” Eddie comments, voice low and secretive to make sure no one hears.  
Richie considers it. “Well,” he says in the end, “I never implied there isn’t a power imbalance. Paparazzi are the hippos with their mouths wide open; I’m the tiny little bird eating the food stuck between their fangs.”  
“And what does that make me?”  
“The sexy gazelle with the tight ass,” he says, and right after, before Eddie has the time to go all red in the face with rage, “we’re here!”

Richie gestures at the glass doors of the restaurant they finally reached, hidden under a colonnade that shelters it, partly, from the trafficked street. It’s not the kind of place that sees celebrities very often, Bev warned him, and indeed Richie’s never been here, but she swears by it—he suspects she insisted on booking them a table here not because of the excellent bruschetta (which what the fuck, Beverly, who recommends a restaurant because of their _bruschetta_ ), but because it’s cozy and full of couples who have only eyes for each other.  
He sees that now, as he spies the warm atmosphere inside before looking back at Eddie. 

The internal war he’s been obviously going through finds a winner: he doesn’t yell at Richie for calling his ass tight like he clearly wants to, but instead plasters on a pleasant, _extremely fake_ smile.  
“This is the second time tonight I want to fake-break up with you,” he hisses through his bared teeth.  
“Only the second?” Richie asks, his own smile completely genuine. Riling up this guy is so much _fun_ ; so many people either brush off the nonsensical bullshit that comes out of Richie’s mouth or simply laugh along with it. It’s been a while since he could riff off someone’s replies, if you don’t count the many comedians who make it into a _who’s the funniest guy in this room?_ competition and suck the joy out of it. “I’ll take that as a challenge.”

They make their way inside and get escorted to their table by a small brunette who tries her hardest not to look at Richie in the eyes and calls him _Mr. Tozier_ in a somewhat reverential tone. He wants to dial up the charm to make her at ease, but she disappears back to her hostess station before he gets the chance.  
Their table is tucked away from the rest in a less visible corner, and everything about it—the lit candle used as a centerpiece, the long white tablecloth that hides their legs, the muffled laughter and tinkling of cutlery of the other diners—seem to invite them to lean in, speak softly, and only to each other. 

And yet, they’re up against a window, in full view of the busy outside. 

Anyone can see them. Can see Richie, in this restaurant, on a romantic date, with a man.  
He glances at Eddie, who’s scrutinizing his fork like he’s about to do a surgery with it—with a _man_.

It’s fine. He needs to stop checking his Twitter mentions, because the small but loud part of the LGBT community calling him a fraud is starting to hurt more than he expected. Richie’s well aware the world outside his touchscreen doesn’t care nearly as much—about Richie being gay, about ‘his problematic actions of the past’, whatever the fuck those are supposed to be. It doesn’t even care about Richie _as a person_. For every million people who know his name, there are ten millions who don’t. 

That’s a reassuring thought. He likes being under the spotlight, but he never wanted it to get _too_ bright. 1000 Watts _tops_. 

He counts himself lucky, though. Eddie really looks good enough to eat in that white shirt and the expensive watch Richie paid for, and the part of Richie’s brain that finds him hot and charming and _different_ is louder than anything else for now. He thinks he might even get through this dinner without being a nervous mess. 

Richie picks a slice of bread from the little basket their waiter brought, and takes great care in speaking through a mouthful of it. “So, Eddie,” he says—and as he hoped Eddie grimaces at his lack of manners—”I did stalk your Twitter, but it’s like…really fucking boring, dude, not gonna lie. You follow the National Geographic and Channel 4 News, what the fuck am I supposed to do with that?”  
Eddie scowls at him with those angry caterpillar eyebrows of his, which Richie _still_ doesn’t want to lick because that’s _still_ really fucking weird. “Well, what were you expecting? Shirtless mirror selfies?” he says, and then flushes to the tips of his hair.  
Richie watches it happen, and feels positively giddy with delight at Eddie’s embarrassment. “Wow, that was an incredibly specific random example. Should have I scrolled deeper?”  
“Of course _not_.” Eddie opens his menu and doesn’t raise his eyes from it. He’s very much not reading a single word on it. “I deleted them.”

Richie _aww_ s his disappointment, and then groans in pain when a swift Gucci loafer hits him in the shin, but it’s worth it for the way Eddie looks up at him in flustered annoyance. He’s still bright red in the face, and the lit candle on the table may paint his features sharp and angular, but there’s no hiding the round softness of his dark eyes, frowning up at Richie through long lashes.  
_What the fuuuuuuuuck_ , Richie thinks, with as many u’s as he feels necessary, and tries his hardest not to imagine those eyes looking up at him in a very different context. 

“So,” he says, not knowing exactly what else will come out of his mouth, “that was a supposed to be a subtle attempt at getting to know you better. Don’t distract me with non-existent shirtless pics.”  
Eddie finally puts down the menu, seemingly placated for now. “There’s not much to say, to be honest,” he confesses. “I’m a nurse major at UCLA. I’m 24. I like, uh, statistics? And...cars. _Some_ cars, at least.”  
Richie snorts around a bite of bread. He swallows it down and says, “wow, I feel like I’ve known you my entire life.”  
“The first date is too early to tell you about my crippling mommy issues,” Eddie retorts through a truly impressive eye roll.  
“Mommy issues?” Richie repeats, unreasonably excited. “Now we’re talking! Get a glass of wine in me and I’ll tell you about the time I almost got addicted to heroin.”  
Eddie gingerly picks up a slice of bread, and as he fails to bite back a smile, and raises it up like you would a champagne flute. “To small talk,” he deadpans.”  
Richie bumps his slice on Eddie’s, and hopes his face is not betraying how smitten by this guy he feels. “To small talk.”

♡♡♡

“No, shut the fuck up, we can’t use that,” Eddie protests. 

“Why not!” Richie says, and it earns him a whisper-shouted _shh_! from Eddie at the volume. It ends up being louder than the words he wanted to shush, and Richie giggles at his embarrassed face when a woman glares at them from her table. 

They are, admittedly, both tipsy on the nice red wine their waitress chose for them. Eddie doesn’t drink that often, or so he said, and Richie’s not the type to sip on glasses of Chianti when he could get shitfaced on top-shelf whiskey, so they let the shy girl with the high ponytail make the choice for them. There are now empty plates sitting in front of them, waiting to be switched with their desserts, but the bottle of wine still has at least a glass each to offer. 

“Why not?” Richie repeats, this time with a theatrical whisper.  
Eddie squints, and waves a fork at him. “Because that’s a dumb story! Can’t we just tell people we met on Tinder?”  
“I’m _sorry_ ,” Richie says, mocking offense, “you think _Tinder_ is more interesting than meeting at a Renaissance fair? Have you lost your mind?”  
A deadpan stare. “No, no, let me get this straight. In this scenario I was a—a _knight_ , in one of those nerdy fake tournaments, and you were watching me from the stand—”  
“And _you_ were wearing a skimpy chainmail armor.”  
“—and what, I _won_ and then...Fucking, took off my helmet, found your eyes in the crowd and dedicated the victory to you?”  
Richie bites back a laugh at Eddie’s inspired, if unimpressed, expansion on Richie’s _incredible_ idea for a fake first meeting. “And it was love at first sight!” he concludes for him.  
“Don’t try to involve me in your repressed Princess Bride-themed sexual fantasies,” Eddie says, and then his eyes go wide, and he whips his neck to look out of the window. “ _Oh_.”

“They’re here?” Richie asks, nonchalant as he drinks some of his wine. He lets the sweet aftertaste coat his mouth as he carefully avoids doing what Eddie already is: staring back at the photographers like a hawk. He glances to his right casually, and through the glass he catches a glimpse of a camera’s flash going off.  
Eddie simply nods, cheeks so much redder than seconds earlier, and he visibly forces himself to bring his attention back to Richie.  
“Wanna fuck with them?” Richie proposes, voice going softer than he intended—he blames that particular failure on the alcohol.  
“Yeah. Can we? _Yes_.”

Eddie’s badly concealed enthusiasm strokes a particularly sensitive cord within Richie: his need to have a partner in crime. He gives himself one more second to observe the limpid pools of his eyes flick back and forth between Richie and the wall of windows on his left, as if he can’t help stealing glances at the people outside—and Richie is doing the same with Eddie, so he’s in no position to judge—before he puts down his drink, and smiles wide.  
“Just follow my lead,” he says, and straightens his back, head robotically turning to look at the paparazzi. He can distinguish, between the reflections on the glass and his own subpar eyesight, at least three of them with their cameras held high over their faces. Richie carefully puts both arms on the table, bent at the elbow and perfectly parallel, and uses seventeen years of experience as an actor to force the grin off his face. He hears more than sees Eddie be extremely confused before he lets out a quiet _oh, I see_ and shifts to mimic Richie’s position. 

They must stay like that for at least three minutes, staring blank and lifeless at the photographers, giving them the worst fucking pictures possible for the inevitable _Richie Tozier spotted with new boyfriend!_ articles that’ll pop up like mushrooms tomorrow.  
He can’t turn his head to look at Eddie, lest he ruins the illusion, but he can imagine his stern, thin-lipped face so clearly his chest starts to shake with restrained laughter.  
“Fucking _stop that,”_ Eddie mumbles without moving his mouth, which doesn’t help the situation, and the second kick of the night to Richie’s shin _almost_ makes him break—but contrary to what Richie’s time hosting SNL would make you believe, he _is_ capable of not laughing at his own jokes, thank you very much.

That’s a lie. When one paparazzo lowers his camera and flips them off with fervor, he _does_ laugh until Eddie asks him, stone faced, whether he’s about to die from asphyxiation or not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you thought :D I'll try to keep a similar schedule, with fairly long chapters every ten days or so. Thank you all for the support, I would have never thought so many people would be interested in this fic. There will be smut soon! And it will not involve a bed, wink wink, nudge nudge
> 
> Edit: On second thought, I should really post the last chapter of my other wip before I get back to this. It might take longer than ten days, sorry about that!

**Author's Note:**

> Is this scenario realistic? No. But is it fun? God, yeah. Let me know what you thought! 
> 
> Find me on [Tumblr](https://mere-mortifer.tumblr.com/) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/mere_mortifer), I'm mere_mortifer on both.


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